Another myrln Missive.
Myrln’s not a blogger. He’s an emailer. And every once in a while I think his email is worth sharing. I tend to agree with his point below about the Department of Disinformation.
I suppose we remember the proposed Dept. of Disinformation once proposed then withdrawn by the Dumbya gang. More than ever, I'm convinced it may have been apparently withdrawn but exists covertly to create confusion, conflicting stories, and keep the level of fear/concern as high as possible in the conviction that uncertain people will rely upon anything and everything their leaders tell them. Today's conflicting statements re WMD: not really the central reason for war, we're cutting back on searching weapons sites in Iraq, we're expanding numbers of those to search in Iraq, we're looking to mend fences with France/Germany, we're only praising Poland because they supported war, lowering terror alert level after just raising it (again on a national holiday), and on and on -- all convinces me the Dept. of Dis exists and functions at highest capacity upon the highest authority.
And Dean says Hilary would make a great president. Feh. I have no intention of supporting any major party candidate in any election for the rest of my life. Democracy in the US has become a joke, devoid of any of the original principles. It has been sold wholesale to special interests and big business. I will hereafter write in my own name for every office up for election.
Yah. It’s getting harder and harder to believe anything can be changed, no matter who runs, how many vote, and/or what we say/write/rant.
And speaking of the WMDs, No Utopia has creatively created an EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE ENTIRE BRAIN TRUST OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IN ONE FELL SWOOP inspired by billmon's list of chronological quotes by the Bushites regarding the evolving non-existence of those nasty things
Feh. Yes. Much Feh.
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A look into my eyes.
That Web Eyes Project has gotten me thinking.
I look into the mirror every day as I put on makeup and do my hair, but I never really look right into my eyes. That’s why when I took their picture, I did it without makeup and without including hair, eyebrows etc. -- no distractions of vanity.
Back in the seventies, I read all kinds of books and articles about how (in general and with most people) the left hemisphere of the brain (the part that process information in a linear, logical, literal way) influences the right side of the body and the right hemisphere of the brain (the part that understands in a holistic, metaphorical, non-linear way) influences the left side.
So, when I look at my two eyes, I notice the distinct difference – both literal and metaphorical – between them. Assuming that the physical characteristics of my right and left eyes are influenced by the opposite brain hemispheres, the metaphors become really interesting.
My right eye (associated with the left brain?) is more open, as though it’s straining to see beyond the obvious. Interestingly enough, the way I angled the photo sheds more light on my right eye. My left eye, on the other hand, is cast in shadow and looks more cynical, less open, more self-protected.
The left and right sides of my body are also different. As I walked in the park yesterday with the sun at my back, I noticed that my right shoulder is lower than my left. I’ll have to ponder what that means.
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The Web Eyes Project
The brains and balls behind Blog Sisters, Jeneane Sessum, has again come up with an eye-opening idea, The Web Eyes Project.
So, here's mine, Jeneane. Can I play?
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A Homonyminal Prayer to Pan
The sun! The sun! And all we can become!
Theodore Roethke, "What Can I Tell My Bones"
A Homonyminal Prayer to Pan
Let the sun find its home in this world today.
These days of rain wear at the heart.
I leave with you a mother’s gift of stones
saved in an abalone shell --
prayers for jasper endurance,
turquoise fortune, carnelian fire,
and most of all, a mother’s
rose quartz embrace.
Play your sunny marigold songs, my son.
It is time for a time in the sun.
(copyright 2003 EF)
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Join the 'Stop George!' Viral Campaign.
A new website, stopgeorge.com has launched a viral marketing campaign to defeat George Bush in the next election, with free posters, bumper stickers, and other stuff to download and print out and wear, display, and distribute. The mission statement of this effort is chock full of excellent rationale for why such a campaign is crucial to bringing the truths of Bush's reign of terror to the forefront of the American consciousness (as well as the American conscience). For example:
WHAT'S THE POINT OF ATTACKING GEORGE? SHOULDN'T WE PUT ALL OF OUR ENERGY INTO SUPPORTING ONE OF HIS OPPONENTS?
The public image of George has been carefully created and maintained by some of the most successful and talented people in the business. Any candidate, no matter how qualified, will have a difficult time countering that well-constructed image. And if they do attack George, they may be condemned as a dirty politician, a dangerous position to be in for an opposition candidate. In addition, any viable opponent (or opponents) to George will not come to the forefront until the summer of 2004. That gives George over a year to promote his campaign without challenge while potential opponents fight among themselves. It is important to start poking holes in George's well-constructed image as soon as possible.
and
We need to show Americans who are afraid to speak out against George that there are others like them and it's OK to speak out. We need to show Americans who don't even know that they have a reason to disagree with George that they do have a reason. And we need to encourage those who have not voted in the past that in 2004, their vote will make a difference. Remember, the last George was considered unbeatable less than a year before his defeat.
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We make no difference.
Let’s face it. The Bushites are going to continue steamrolling ahead with their agendas on all fronts whether we ordinary tax-paying citizens like it or not. They couldn’t care less that we express public opposition through every possible medium. It doesn’t seem to matter a bit to them how much publicity their onerous advances get both nationally and internationally. No skin off their noses, right?
The following was mentioned by Tom Brokaw on the Nightly News, but it hasn’t been posted on that site yet. I got it from the Detroit Free Press:
A loophole that allows small-business owners to deduct $25,000 for luxury sport-utility vehicles will grow to $100,000 under the $350-billion stimulus plan expected to be approved by the Senate today and signed by President George W. Bush on Monday…. The provision was created in 1996 to prevent farmers and others from being penalized by the 10-percent luxury tax on vehicles costing over $30,000 when they purchased pickup trucks and tractors…. …Taxpayers for Common Sense, based in Washington, estimates the SUV loophole could cost taxpayers between $840 million and $987 million for every 100,000 vehicles sold to businesses….
Just another example of the Bushite tradition of twisting, distorting, and manipulating something that was supposed to help those in need and making it serve the elite instead. The Nightly News interviewed several businessmen who were all set to buy sedans, but, wotthehell, why not upgrade and get the tax deduction. More than $800 million in lost taxes that could be used to help those who can't even afford a bicycle? Hell, no skin off their noses.
And then, on an Australian news web site, an even more devastatingly evil report -- this time about the Bushites’ machinations regarding plans for death camps at Guantanamo Bay.
Prisoners would be tried, convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury and without right of appeal, The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported yesterday…. General Miller said building a death row was one plan. Another was to have a permanent jail, with possibly an execution chamber. …The US has already said detainees would be tried by tribunals, without juries or appeals to a higher court. Detainees will be allowed only US lawyers.
The Bushites don’t pay any attention to the millions of Americans who oppose either all or parts of their agenda for power. Instead, they continue to disregard just about every human right defended by the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Convention, the American Constitution, and most of the great religious traditions of this planet. Is the rest of the world going to have to unite against the arrogance of our American leaders before those egomaniacs begin paying attention to just how much opposition, anger, and distrust they are stirring up? They sure ain’t listening to us.
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The Crone Evolution.
These are my two grandmothers in the mid-1940s, when they were a few years younger than I am now.
That's my mother's mother on the left -- the small, straight-backed, serious woman -- the one who saved my life with her Old World medicine magic (see poem below).
My father's mother is bigger, softer-looking, but was no less strong. She remembered growing up in Skoldy, Poland, admiring her third cousin, who became the famous Madame Marie Curie. Strong women, all.
But how old they look to me now, even though, today, I am older than they are in that photo. Life was hard for them -- very serious business, with five kids each and hard-working blue-collared husbands. They cooked well, cleaned well, and passed along to me their magical and matriarchal genes -- the blessings and curse of my crone heritage.
On this day of memory, I remember my grandmothers.
HEART OF ROM
Cyganka! My grandmother shouted
as I bounded off the front stoop
onto the wet city street,
propelled by the promise of stolen kisses
and the musky taste of Tangee
still slick on my lips.
Gypsy! Even the word
brought blood rushing
to the pit of my stomach.
How I wished for the wild hair,
dark eyes, skin like old copper,
for the freedom to gleam
like crystal when I walk,
for a wisdom ancient as the land,
as the sweep of continents,
the shriek of willful wind
through openings in stones.
Cyganka! She hurled it
like an epithet,
but I role it like a broom
over landscapes grown deaf to her fears.
She named me true, my Polish grandmother
-- a small strong-handed woman
with gypsy fire in her voice
and a back turned straight
against truths too bold to hold.
Yet, they tell me once,
as I lay young and dying
lungs rattling with rifts of air,
fever lighting my face to flame,
(the doctor came and went,
scowling at the earth) --
in the draped and stifling room,
she unfolded her family secrets:
holy candles, crystal cups,
vials of spirits, leeches, as
my mother watched from shadow,
willing demons away with her eyes.
They tell me when the priest arrived,
surprised to find the child alive,
he never commended on the faint red circles
following the tender length of spine,
or the sprinkling of blood marks
along the back, like the bites
of mythic bats or the denounced
touches of wizened old wives.
And so I keep signs
of these grandmothers, still
--in fragrant herbs sprinkled in tea,
in shells and stones arranged on shelves,
in faint red circles, drawn in firelight.
Cyganka! I call to my daughter,
offering gifts of crystals
that fire the sky
where she walks.
(copyright EF 1980)
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Whose Truth?
The other evening I went to an event held to give some visibility to the Glass Lake Studio (Expressive Arts Therapy Program) and to bid farewell to its founder and his wife, who are moving to Canada to join a community led by ?guru? John de Ruiter.
According to de Ruiter's site,
Canadian born John de Ruiter responds to invitations World-wide, addressing audiences from "core splitting honesty" and his unconditional way of absolute surrender and servitude to Truth.
Because I steer clear of anyone who spells Truth with a capital "T" (and run fast in the other direction from concepts like "surrender" and "servitude"), I am always a little taken aback when people who have been among my circle of friends go off to embrace such Truth so blissfully and assuredly. With the de Ruiter Truth, it's not just the couple to whom I recently wished "safe journey." Another couple I know -- both well-trained psychologists with successful practices -- have already moved, at least temporarily, north to de Ruiter's Canadian enclave.
Without a doubt, truth is very important. Look at the mess the world is in because so many of our leaders have forgotten how to tell it. It's interesting that de Ruiter's wife recently left him because he is sleeping with two of his lovely blonde followers. I think that he has some sort of rationalization of the difference between his own "personal truth" (small "t") and Ultimate Truth (capital "T"). Heh.
It all makes me stop to think about how many ways of defining "truth" there are out there. There's scientific truth, historical truth, personal truth, mythic truth. And then there's the capital "T" Truth, the idea of which always seems so compelling. It also tends to be the idea behind many of the most gruesome murdering sprees of mankind, from the Crusades to the war on terrorism.
Scientific truths change and evolve as new information is added to the mix. Historical truths often are a combination of actual facts colored by personal truths. It's all so messy, so chaotic, so lacking in surety -- kind of like life. To believe or not to believe. We make our choices and we take our chances.
Personally, my choice for truth usually is to try to match up my personal truths with the kinds of mythic ones that Joseph Campbell so eloquently and artfully described and analyzed in his too-soon-forgotten series of PBS programs and books. I guess it's my way of integrating the big picture with the little picture, the personal with the planetary. Because, for me, it's the only way for me to arrive at truths that I can count on, that provides the loom on which I can weave that chaos of science and history and personalities into the fabric of a life that I can wrap around myself for safety and sustenance.
All the rest is someone else's truth. Someone else's Truth.
That's why the current American intrusion into the Middle East is so confusing to most people. (Makes you want to run way and hide in the bosom of de Ruiter Truth, doesn't it?)
To help you get at some of the truths about Middle East Truths, you might want to link over to Bob Harris' post on here , which begins:
It may be anything from a play for leverage in Iraq to the opening drumbeat for another war, but the White House, Rumsfeld, and Blair have all gotten on Iran's case for allegedly harboring Al-Qaeda suspects, which supposedly even led to this week's increased terror warning.
Iran denies the charge.
Who's telling the truth? I don't know. But keep reading.
It's well-worth reading.
And to get a better fix on the continuing un-truths being thrown at us by the Bushies, check out Peter Beinart's article in The New Republic Online that spells out "the record over the last eight months."
Whose truth. Yes, indeed.
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The Propaganda Dilemma
Watching CBS’s miniseries on Hitler, The Rise of Evil, I was even more frightened by the Germany-US parallel regarding the ordinary citizen’s susceptibility to propaganda than I was by the parallel between the machinations and political maneuverings of Bush and Hitler.
Given the ethical weaknesses in human nature, there always will be immoral and amoral individuals who rise to power because they are talented manipulators and deceivers. So, given that fact, how are we ordinary politically powerless citizens supposed to figure out when the tail is wagging the dog? Or more accurately, what will it take for all of those patriotic support-the-president Americans to accept the fact that we are being duped, over and over again, by Bush’s propaganda machine?
The U.S.-staged toppling of Saddam’s statue got plenty of mainstream publicity. Now the deception of Jessica Lynch fantasy rescue is finally coming to light. How can anyone doubt that these are just the tips of the iceberg? How much more of what the U.S. has orchestrated – using 9/11 as the excuse – has been scripted and acted out for the sole purpose of trying to fool Americans into believing that Bush’s might makes right?
It’s no longer hard for me to understand how the German people allowed themselves to be duped, manipulated, suckered, and victimized by carefully and creatively crafted propaganda. I see so many of my fellow Americans being led like sheep to the same kind of soul-less slaughter of will.
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never enough Elmo
Since the terry-cloth "Elmo-head" pillow (with detachable arms) -- pictured above -- that I created was such a hit with my 9-month old grandson, I decided to design and crochet a Baby-Elmo hand puppet.
It came out so good that I'm attempting a Winnie-the-Pooh one.
Retirement, combined with caregiving, leaves lots of time for extreme dillitantism and a need to do something to keep my hands out of the potato chip bag.
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Smart Presidential Campaigning
More why I like Howard Dean
In an interview with the online magazine Truthout, Howard Dean today discusses his views on the Patriot Act and the media. In Grist magazine, he shares his concerns about the environment and his anger at President Bush's energy and environmental failures. Finally, an Associated Press article about his successful online fundraising highlights that Dean "hit the $1 million mark in Internet fund raising last week, becoming the first 2004 presidential hopeful to announce he has done so."
To read the Truthout interview, click here.
To read the Grist interview, click here.
To read the AP article, click here.
And speaking of the opposition to the Patriot Act, b!X tells me that the Common Council here in Albany NY has passed a resolution opposing it. Sure enough here's the link I found.
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The Evil, Risen
I taped the CBS miniseries The Rise of Evil so that my mother and I can watch it with the commercials fast-forwarded. (Maybe that way she'll stay awake.) But non-blogger 'myrln' did watch it, and this is what he has to say about it:
To those who didn't see the Hitler mini-series, I say, Too bad. Were I a blogger, I would say to all who didn't, Why not? Too much like ancient history? Well, that plays right into the hands of Dumbya and Gang. The fact is, CBS deserved support for getting this program done and on the air, but it couldn't attract major advertisers and settled for PSAs and mail order ads mostly. Business, I guess, didn't want to risk offending Zionists who condemned the program (tho' major Jewish leaders who previewed it gave it the highest praise), or didn't want to risk offending the current administration(?).
Anyone who didn't see it but cares and knows history can/does repeat itself needs to buy/rent it when it's released into general distribution. Why? Because while it's not directly analogous to 2003 America, it's familiar enough to be unnerving. How? Let me
count the ways.
-- Hitler's relentless drive to consolidate the power in the Chancellor while at the same time usurping congressional (Reichstag) powers.
-- Reluctance of media to report on Brown-shirt thuggery for fear of offending Hitler. As one reporter/editor says, "No one wants to read about anything they could do something about. It's as if we've gone stupid or blind." (Seem familiar?) And when he does get something in print, his home and wife are threatened, the paper smoke-bombed, and eventually, he is taken into "protective custody" and ultimately sent to the early camps, one of the first at Dachau, where he is finally killed. His wife is never told of his death, only receives a package with his bloodied, broken glasses.
-- Movie news ('30s equivalent of tv news) becomes rah-rah propaganda for Hitler and the National Socialist Party (Nazis). (Sound familiar?)
-- His subversion of democratic process to empower his party and move toward chancellorship by having his party consistently walk out of Reichstag and thus force new elections. (Well...that sounds like Texas.)
-- Then he secretly orders the Reichstag building burned and afterward claims, "The terorists have opened fire, and we will fire back." (Sound familiar??)
-- To fight the alleged terrorists, he engineers new procedures: all legislative matters will be handled by the administration as well as communications etc. under what he called the Enabling Act. "Any refusal to go along would be regarded as opposition," he said, making clear the implication that "opposition" was equivalent of terrorism or treason. (Sound familiar?)
The final impression was one of Nazi Germany's echoes in history becoming voices again in our current age in our own country. Not exact parallels, as I said, but so unnervingly familiar. Right down to when he's take full control of the country and the final moments of "Deutschland Uber Alles" filling the air over pictures Krystalnacht, and the camps, and of bodies from the camps stacked like cordwood (those same ones I saw in movietone news after WWII ended). Somehow, I heard simultaneously in my head the almost ubiquitous "God Bless America" just under the other melody.
All too close for comfort. CBS deserves a medal, or at least praise, for doing the miniseries.
I notice that lots of people are reluctant to make the comparison between Hitler and Bush. But, isn't it obvious???
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Out of the Box and into the Garden.
The Gravity of Gardens (May 2002)
They gave me a garden
the size of a grave,
so I filled it with raucous
reminders of sense:
marigold nests,
nasturtium fountains,
explosions of parsley, and
riots of lavender --
forests of tomato plants
asserting lush ascendance
over scent-full beds of
rosemary, basil, and sage.
And waving madly above them all,
stalks of perplexing
Jerusalem artichoke,
that unkillable weed
that blossoms and burrows
and grows up to nine feet tall,
defying the grim arrogance
of gravity.
Gardening the Grave (May 2003)
Four stakes,
two tomato plants
(so far),
last year’s lavender
a spray of parsley,
and the ever-present Pan
playing to a medley
of sunny marigolds
and stellar basil sprouts.
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A Day Out of the Box #3
The fabric of our lives.
Yesterday
I sent a package
to my second cousin,
stationed in Iraq –
six pairs of
white cotton underpants
and a package of
vitamin C lozenges,
because even though
I protest this vile war,
urge presidential impeachment,
and grieve for those collaterally damaged,
I remember her
before the wars -- that
feisty tow-headed toddler,
mindful motherless girl,
adventuresome young woman,
who took a calculated risk
that tossed her into desert dirt,
and a longing for
fresh, clean underwear.
(copyright EF 2003)
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A Day Out of the Box. #2
One assignment at the poetry workshop led by Joan Murray and held at the Still Point Retreat Center was to write a poem that dealt with fear.
An old story
Another noiseless night,
and, again, the ambulance
waits below her window,
its strobe striping red
through the slats
of her closed blinds.
She listens for whispers
from the long hallway,
some hint of who it is
this time --
maybe the frowning one
who drifts, slow in motion,
beside her grizzled
three-legged dog;
maybe that sweet sad man
who wheels himself each day at three
into the patch of sun at the front door;
or maybe someone still
faceless and frightened
keeping silent vigil
until three a.m.
(copyright EF 2003)
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Are we as dumb as Dumbya?
From myrln, who heard about it on NPR:
You may remember Dumbya's big "hydrogen car" plan in his proposed budget at some couple of billion or so bucks. Many said, Huh? Well, get ready to huh again.
Now there are basically 2 ways to get hydrogen: from water and from hydrocarbons. The former leaves behind oxygen, the latter carbon. Which method does the Dumbya plan focus on? Why the hydrocarbon one, silly. Why? Because the basic hydrocarbons to be used are FOSSIL FUELS!!!!!!!!!!!! Which means precisely no difference in our basic approach since we'd still be totally dependent on fossil fuels. Why would he choose that approach? Can you say Halliburton? Can you say Oil. Can you say Iraq?
(And btw, carbon is harmful to environment, too -- airwise, I think. Supposedly it would have to be bonded to rocks and buried in the earth, a very expensive process and likely another $$$bone Dumbya can toss his businessbuds
Are we going to let him get away with this??? Are we going to vote those unethical manipulators out of office?
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Lies, lies, and more lying videotapes.
They're making a movie of Jessica Lynch's rescue. Surprise, surprise! Except the original rescue was already a made-for-tv movie according to the BBC, as reported in an article in the Austin American Statesman
"It was like a Hollywood film," Uday said, according to the BBC. "They cried, 'Go, go, go,' with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show -- an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors."
Kampfner, writing in the Guardian, said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman in Washington, declined to release the unedited military video to clear up discrepancies. Nor would Whitman comment on Lynch's injuries, saying only that he understood there is "some conflicting information out there."
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A Day Out of the Box #1
The Stone Labyrinth at Still Point
Sometimes, Life
Sometimes life,
like a labyrinth,
leads you
where you have to go.
You think you make choices –
this man or that,
some child or not.
You set your alarm,
choose your shoes,
gather friends for tea,
count your changes,
until one day a corner comes,
slipping you a glimpse
of those strings of stones
along your shadow’s edge.
And sometimes,
perhaps,
on a perfect day
under a perfect sky
a perfect black cat
with eyes like glowing stones
races across your path
and waits in the early ferns
for you to cross hers.
copyright 2003 Elaine Frankonis
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Couldn’t let these slip by…
…because they affirm and confirm my own opinions, feelings, beliefs. It’s nice to feel part of a larger, smarter, and like-minded community:
1. Maureen Dowd’s great column "Gender Mythis Alive on Screen" in my newspaper today comparing "The Matrix Reloaded" with "Down With Love" and then stating:
Watching "The Matrix Reloaded" can only refresh your appreciation of Karl Rove, who understands the power of archetypal myths…..Rove has cast Bush, ..as a GOPNeo: a reluctant hero, a man of few words and one true-blue woman, who must battle enemies and forge alliances in a strange world, building strength and character as he rescues humanity….
Testosterone as a campaign accessory. Some things never change.
2. A eulogy for The Slayer, a strong woman = good archetype who needs to remain in our subconscious to empower our conscious lives:
If there is any moral, it’s that we all mess up despite our best intentions, that sometimes we are our own worst enemies, that we hurt the ones we love and that we will spend a lifetime battling the scariest of demons of all, those inside ourselves.
Buffy is the current archetypal parallel to Kali and Lilith, and we desperately need them these days. Like Anne Miller, the local staff writer whose reflection on Buffy I’m quoting here, this fall, I might actually pay a bill or wash a dish on a Tuesday night for the first time in years.
3. A profile of an old friend, local artist/activist/spiritual explorer Ed McCartan. There was much of importance we shared years ago, and much of importance we continue to share, although our paths have diverged.
… he has woven together a religious philosophy as varied and eclectic as the artwork he produces. For McCartan, there is no distinction between art and spirituality. The two are as intertwined as the body is with the soul or roots are with the earth. These are the topics that frequently color his conversation…
Ed was an inspiration to me in many ways, and I’d like to think it was at least a little mutual. (I swear that once I saw what looked like my shadowy profile in one of his paintings; at least I like to that was the case; he certainly was the inspiration behind several of my poems.)
4. Last, but not least, the piece by my favorite local columnist, Diane Cameron, whom I had the pleasure of meeting on my Day Out of the Box yesterday. She ends her colunmn on "Education is crucial to real democracy" with:
Education can and should empower citizens to participate in society. If a diploma helps us get a better job or make more money, that's a bonus. At the heart of mastering reading, writing and rhetoric is the winning ticket that ensures a genuinely democratic way of life.
(coming: A Day Out of the Box)
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Puzzling it out.
I thought it would be nice to do something (anything!) with my mother on Mother’s Day. She doesn’t like to go out to eat or to a movie. If I rent a movie to watch at home, she falls asleep during it. Most movies bore her because she has no idea how to suspend her disbelief or to imagine what it’s like to be anyone but who she is. There’s nowhere she wants to go and nothing she wants to do. It’s not just old age. She’s been like that for decades. She refuses to believe that what you don’t use, you lose.
So, on a whim, I pull out a small 50-piece puzzle of a Thomas Kincaid cottage that was a Christmas grab-bag gift, figuring that we could spend the afternoon slowly putting the pieces together – together. I had the thought that maybe I could get her interested in taking on a long-term puzzle project – something to keep those synapses firing – something we can keep working on cooperatively.
She surprised me on two fronts: She was willing to give it a try, and she had no idea what one is supposed to do with a jigsaw puzzle. So I explained how it works, and she assumed that we would be competing with each other and keeping score on how many pieces we each placed correctly. After I explained the notion of working cooperatively, figuring it out together, with no pressure for one person to out-do the other, she proceeded to assume that we needed to put the puzzle together in a designated amount of time. The point, for her, was the product, the finished puzzle.
And that’s when I had my AHA!. The process of putting the puzzle together is supposed to be fun. The point, the goal, of doing a jigsaw puzzle is as much the process as it is the product. My mother only values product: the diploma, the clean floor, the obedient well-dressed offspring, the approving nod of a stranger. I know that there are reasons for her obstructed view. But that’s not the point. The point is that we view life in very different ways. If I don’t enjoy the process, I don’t care about the product.
AHA. AHA. AHA.
The point, for me, is the process, feeling the form of the pieces, trying and failing, trying and succeeding, wondering at the pattern slowly forming on the board, keeping the big picture in mind while focusing on the parts in hand. Writing, cooking, dancing, knitting, conversing, designing, sewing, blogging, learning, debating, musing. I need to be engaged by the process, accepting that whatever product that might finally emerge does so as an organic outcome of that process.
No wonder I feel so unreal these days. Each of my days is filled with her unspoken list of expected products. My puzzle stays stuck in a box.
(Next Post: A day out of the box.)
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A rose is so much more than a rose.
Self-described “nerd” Betsy Devine has fun with the rose and all its scientific glories. Her piece got me thinking about the rich mythic history of that ancient pentacled flower.
This excerpted from Barbara Walker’s Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects:
Throughout the Orient, the “flower of the Goddess” was the red China rose, or scarlet hibiscus, five-petaled like the classical rose, before modern multipetaled varieties were created by selective breeding. Like the five-petaled apple blossom and the five-lobed apple, the rose formed a natural pentacle. Like the apple and its pentacle, the rose was sacred to the Goddess everywhere. Romans knew it as the Flower of Venus…. When the Great Mother of the Gods (Cybele) passed in solemn procession through Roman streets, her image was showered with “a snow of roses.” Gnostic scriptures said the first rose sprouted from the menarchal blood of Psyche, the virgin Soul, when she became enamored of Eros, symbol of sexuality.
Arab mystics spoke of a paradise called Bulistan, the Rose Garden, derived from the ancient Babylonian Goddess Gula……
….Rose windows in the western “female” façade of the cathedral usually featured Mary in the center. Church authorities claimed that Mary’s immaculate conception was brought about through the magic of a rose: Mary’s mother Anne (or Hana) conceived her daughter while smelling a rose. Like Aphrodite before her, Mary was addressed as Holy Rose….or Mystic Rose….
…Roses of various kinds also became mystic symbols of alchemy and hermetic lore. The blue rose stood for impossibility. The golden rose meant absolute achievement or perfection. A seven-petaled rose meant …seven degrees of enlightenment. Like the eight-petaled lotus of the Goddess Kali, the eight-petaled rose signified regeneration.
Then, of course, there’s the Rose Cross symbol of the Rosicrucians.
A rose is not only a rose, despite Gertrude Stein’s poetic assertion.
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More reasons to support Howard Dean.
Governor Dean announced his health care plan in a speech delivered at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
“To me, health care isn’t simply a policy issue,” Dean said. “It’s a moral imperative. Here, in the richest, most advanced country in the world in the 21st century, it’s simply wrong for a sick child to go without seeing a doctor because her parents can’t afford it.”
The four point plan, which builds on pre-existing programs such as Medicaid, will offer access to health care for all Americans.
“As a physician, I’ve seen the suffering caused by this nation’s health care crisis,” said Governor Dean. “As a Governor and a doctor, I know how it can be solved. This plan is a targeted, affordable, and realistic approach to expanding access to health care now.”
Governor Dean’s four point plan will cost $88 billion annually—only one-third the cost of Congressman Dick Gephardt’s proposal. The Dean plan, which takes the innovative step of limiting tax deductions and government contracts for large companies which do not provide health insurance to their employees, also includes the following provisions:
• Extending Medicaid to every child and young adult under 25, up to three times the poverty level. It will also require employer health plans to extend coverage to dependents up to age 25.
• Expanding coverage to working families who earn up to 185% of the federal poverty level.
• Allowing those with incomes above that level, as well as small businesses, to buy into a health plan similar to the plan for government employees, while providing tax credits to keep insurance affordable.
• Limiting tax deductions and government contracts for large companies which do not extend health benefits to their employees.
“Americans deserve access to health care as a fundamental right,” said Governor Dean. “I look forward to implementing this plan as President.”
The full speech is available on his website.
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Spring Haiku
dedicated to Jeneane Sessum
spent from winter’s icy ride
three birches bloom
bent but unbroken
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Digital Piecework and a U.S. HomeGuard
Go here for a glimpse of how we just might be careening into the reality version of 1984, with all all "good citizen-spotters" hooked into Big Brother. These are just some of the really scary excerpts.
....We’d need a new security force, numbering in the thousands, to have any hope of guarding every vulnerable spot from spies, intruders, or saboteurs.
Connecticut inventor and entrepreneur Jay Walker says he can recruit just such a security force over the Internet. He believes that thousands of Americans armed with home computers could form the first line of defense against terrorist attack. "My guess," said Walker, "is it’s going to be the most powerful solution yet developed."
and
In fact, US HomeGuard relies on lots of technology. But all of it is readily available; there’s no Buck Rogers gadgets here. Instead, the system would use thousands of digital cameras placed at sensitive areas. The cameras are only put in places that are supposed to be unoccupied, so there’s no danger of invading someone’s privacy. They’ll be equipped with infrared capability, for use even at night.
The images from the cameras would be fed to computers capable of detecting whether anything in the image has moved. Pictures that show no movement are instantly discarded. That will leave only a tiny percentage of questionable images, which must be turned over to human viewers.
That’s where the Internet comes in. Walker Digital had already been working on a concept called "digital piecework" — an efficient way for people to do hourly clerical tasks for pay on their home computers. US HomeGuard takes advantage of this research. It would relay suspicious pictures to the home computers of ordinary people, called spotters, who’d be paid $8 to $10 an hour to review them for evidence of trespassing.
Walker is the guy who came up with the idea that became Priceline, so the government is paying attention to what he has to say.
I think I'm going to check Priceline for airfares to Sweden.
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Deja vue veracities.
It’s true, you know. You can’t believe everything you read – especially if it’s a nationally renowned publication like the NY Times or the New Republic.
Five years ago, a young reporter forged a sterling reputation for himself making up facts, sources, notes, contacts…
According to CBS News,
In fact, it was five years ago this weekend that one of the greatest journalistic frauds in history began to unravel.
The perpetrator was Stephen Glass, a 25-year-old rising star at The New Republic, who wrote dozens of high-profile articles for a number of national publications in which he made things up.
And now, deja vue all over again with the New York Times:
The reporter, Jayson Blair, 27, misled readers and Times colleagues with dispatches that purported to be from Maryland, Texas and other states, when often he was far away, in New York. He fabricated comments. He concocted scenes. He lifted material from other newspapers and wire services. He selected details from photographs to create the impression he had been somewhere or seen someone, when he had not.
And he used these techniques to write falsely about emotionally charged moments in recent history, from the deadly sniper attacks in suburban Washington to the anguish of families grieving for loved ones killed in Iraq.
Well, it’s the tenor of the times, isn’t it? The accepted behavior of America’s most influential citizens, including some of Bush’s closest friends and allies, being self-serving lying, cheating, and manipulation?
Halliburton Co. you know, the one to which Vice President Dick Cheney had intimate connections? Wednesday, the Bush administration denied there was any connection between Cheney's former role in running the company and a $76.7 million no-bid contract with the government to extinguish Iraqi oil well fires and help restart Iraq's oil industry.
Sure.
According to an AP story, A subsidiary of Halliburton Co. paid a Nigerian tax official $2.4 million in bribes to get favorable tax treatment…. In a filing made Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said its KBR subsidiary "made improper payments of approximately $2.4 million to an entity owned by a Nigerian national who held himself out as a tax consultant when in fact he was an employee of a local tax authority."
What a world! What a world! (Yes, I know that those were the parting words of the Wicked Witch of the West.)
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Three reasons why I'm so glad I had kids:
and, of course, him.
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Mother's Day Rant
Riane Eisler, who published her book on "cultural transformation" The Chalice and the Blade a quarter of a century ago, has an op-ed piece in today's paper about Mothers Day and caregiving.
I read The Chalice and the Blade when it first came out, during my tumultuous feminist years, when I was devouring everything I could find about the evolution of the female of our species. Not The Descent of Man, nor The Naked Ape, but The Descent of Woman.
As one reader who reviewed Eisler's book wrote:
Based on the work of the remarkable archaeologist Marija Gimbutas and many other scientists and scholars, Riane Eisler discusses Truth after Truth of our world's wonderful Prehistory in which, rather than the caveman Lie, our ancestors were peaceful, highly artistic, compassionate people who loved and celebrated all Life and worshipped the Goddess. The remains of their cities prove that they lived communally with no slaves and no signs of war for 2000 years until the cruel, bloody invasions of the peripheral, nomadic Indo-Europeans. Our "civilization" has ever after been based on the Dominator model: a history filled with wars, slavery, murder, rape, violence; men dominating women, children, and other men; in which values of compassion and peace are set aside or suppressed.
I have been taken to task before by other female bloggers for "as they see it" advocating matriarchy. But that's never been my point. My point always has been that we need to dismantle the patriarchy and build it into (or maybe re-build, if we believe Eisler's and Gimbutas' research) an egalitarian society that values the peaceful and compassionate nature of the female archetype, that maintains an infrastructure that supports the role of the person-nurturing "mother-figure" as much as it supports the goals of the achievement-oriented "father-figure." Please note that I am not referring to actual gender-based qualities but rather to archetypical ones.
As Eisler states:
The work of caregiving in families, whether it's done by women or men, is not even included in measures of economic productivity, such as gross domestic product (GDP). The GDP does include, however, work such as building and using weapons, making and selling cigarettes and other activities that destroy rather than nurture life.
That's the point.
There is enough statistical evidence to support the fact that women and the role they continue to play in our nation today are still a long way from being valued. As Eisler reports in her Mother's Day article today:
In our wealthy nation, millions of mothers - largely former middle-class women who devoted most of their lives to taking care of others - face an old age of poverty. They are twice as likely to be poor than older men.
Despite all the rhetoric about motherhood and apple pie, our economic system does not support mothers or other family members who do the work of caregiving. It does not reward this essential work in a way that helps put food on the table or a roof over our heads..
In the Scandinavian nations, as well as in France, Germany, Great Britain, New Zealand and other industrialized democracies, there is paid parental leave, and California recently enacted such a law. In other industrialized nations, there are government subsidies for childcare and home elderly care.
Some critics claim that such policies will encourage people to stay home and not take outside jobs, and will lead to a high birth rate. But nothing of the sort has happened in nations with such policies that are friendly to caregivers.
The Scandinavian nations have a low birthrate, prosperous economies and high rate of women in elected positions (in Finland, both the president and prime minister are women).
The lesson from this is that only when caregiving is valued can we realistically expect more caring social policies.
Keep in mind that "caregiving" does not just mean giving birth to and raising children. As Eisler points out,
High-quality caregiving is essential for children's welfare and development. Community investment in caregiving will pay for itself in less than a generation. Consider the enormous community expense of not investing in good childcare - from crime, mental illness, drug abuse and lost human potential - to the economic consequences of lower quality "human capital."
Women are still the main caregivers. Professions that entail caregiving, such as childcare and elementary school teaching, where women dominate, are lower paid than professions that do not involve caregiving, such as manufacturing and engineering, which are predominantly male.
And, as a woman, whether you consider yourself a caregiver or not, you will one day be an older woman -- maybe even a very old woman. An article in my local paper today by Korky Vann of the Hartford Courant (for which I can?t seem to find a link) states:
According to research from the International Longevity Center-USA, an aging-issues think tank, and the AARP Foundation, women older than 65 are twice as likely to be poor as men older than 65.
A number of factors contribute to the financial difficulties older women often face, including: Women earn less than men. Women are more likely to work as unpaid family caregivers. Women are only half as likely as men to have private pension, and their pensions are only half as large.
Vann's article cites a report that recommends changes in public policy, such as initiating retirement credits for unpaid work such a caregiving.
And, having children aside, you might wind up where I am, caregiving for your parent (certainly something I believed, in my younger days, that I would never do). What goes around, comes around. And, when it goes around again, maybe I'll move to Sweden -- especially if Bush gets re-elected.
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The first Mother's Day was a call for peace.
From Sojourners website:
Did you know that Mother's Day was suggested as a day of peace in the United States by Julia Ward Howe who protested the carnage of war in her bold proclamation of 1870? Decades later in 1907, the first Mother's Day observance was held at a church service honoring the memory of Anna Reese Jarvis in Grafton, West Virginia. Jarvis, an Appalachian homemaker, organized women during the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions and to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.
Mother's Day Proclamation
-- Julia Ward Howe, 1870
Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, disarm! The Sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
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"Older than dirt."
I’m packing to go visit my daughter and son-in-law and grandson for a couple of days. It’s mother’s day this weekend, but that’s not really the reason I’m going to drive out there. My grandson is growing by almost literal leaps and bounds. He’s 9 months old and I’ve already missed a lot of his baby Ahas! It’s about a 3 ½ hour drive out there, and I don’t leave my mother to go out that way very often. I want him to know who I am; I want him to feel corny and sentimental and loving toward me, like the sentiments in this verse (by anonymous).
Grandmothers
What ever on earth, can a grandma be for?
She's older than dirt, with one foot out the door.
And what can she know about living today'
When nothing is done in her old fashioned way.
Oh sure, she's sweet, and you love her a lot.
But in terms of real life, what's an ol' grandma got?
Well listen, my sweetie, you might be surprised
To find that your grandma's a youngster disguised.
She still has her dreams, and her values intact,
She's just a bit wiser, yes dear, that's a fact.
Experience has put a few lines on her face.
And that's how she knows, what it’s like in your place.
I know this idea may seem baffling and new.
But honey, your grandmas "Been There, Done That", too.
So when your young life isn't going as planned.
Talk to your grandma -- she'll sure understand.
She's got lots of love and good counsel to give.
And she'll be on your side for as long as you live...
Of course I wish I could spend Mother’s Day with my own kids. While I’ll be back here with my own mom by Sunday, I’ll have had a warm (and really cool) visit with my daughter. My son is across the country on the Pacific coast, but we had a nice long chat on the phone the other night, and a friend of his out there who’s moving across the country for a new job (the unemployment rate in Portland is about the highest in the country) sent me a touching email about how much she and her toddler son have valued his friendship. She ended her note with. Thanks for giving the world such a wonderful son. That’s the best mother’s day gift I could have gotten. (Of course, it wasn’t all my doing, but it certainly is a good feeling to have someone you don't know affirm that you did not really screw up your offspring’s upbringing.)
I’ll probably blogcheck while out Boston way but won’t be posting.
Keep the faith.
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No Laughing Matter.
The title of Paul Krugman’s “Man on Horseback” article in the NY times refers to Gen. Georges Boulanger [who] cut a fine figure; he looked splendid in uniform, and magnificent on horseback. So his handlers made sure that he appeared in uniform, astride a horse, as often as possible.
Krugman goes on to make the obvious scary contemporary parallel:
....c'mon, guys, it wasn't about honoring the troops, it was about showing the president in a flight suit — was as scary as it was funny.
Mind you, it was funny. At first the White House claimed the dramatic tail-hook landing was necessary because the carrier was too far out to use a helicopter. In fact, the ship was so close to shore that, according to The Associated Press, administration officials "acknowledged positioning the massive ship to provide the best TV angle for Bush's speech, with the sea as his background instead of the San Diego coastline."
A U.S.-based British journalist told me that he and his colleagues had laughed through the whole scene. If Tony Blair had tried such a stunt, he said, the press would have demanded to know how many hospital beds could have been provided for the cost of the jet fuel.
But U.S. television coverage ranged from respectful to gushing. Nobody pointed out that Mr. Bush was breaking an important tradition. And nobody seemed bothered that Mr. Bush, who appears to have skipped more than a year of the National Guard service that kept him out of Vietnam, is now emphasizing his flying experience. (Spare me the hate mail. An exhaustive study by The Boston Globe found no evidence that Mr. Bush fulfilled any of his duties during that missing year. And since Mr. Bush has chosen to play up his National Guard career, this can't be shrugged off as old news.)
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When the movie “Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” came out, it seemed so stupidly far-fetched. Not anymore! And a website has been set up to launch a Dr. Strangelove movie festival to remind us how successful Bush has been in spinning America into a real life re-run of what was meant to be a reel-time spoof:
Pre-emptive strikes. Cowboy diplomacy. Men conspiring in the War Room, bent on world domination. Weapons of mass destruction. And most terrifying of all, an invasion begun for one overwhelming reason: precious fluids.
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Meanwhile, even though support is growing for the work of the national Bill of Rights Defense Committee, (last night the Common Council here in Albany discussed a resolution opposing provisions of the Patriot Act and will probably approve the resolution next week), the freedom to publicly express dissent continues to be suppressed. This lifted from John Leo's "Taking It Off the Streets."
Serious discussion about the rights of protesters is out of fashion right now, partly because the media prefer to focus on the low-level complaints of antiwar celebrities. But there are several troubling trends, among them what seems to be a policy of more and quicker arrests, the practice of banishing protesters to faraway sites, and a tactic that Jonathan Turley of George Washington University's law school calls trap-and-arrest.
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Running on empty.
I took my digital camera into the not-yet-completed town park adjacent to my building this afternoon. I know that I'll never take photos as good as Shelley's but it was a perfect day to give it a few shots. Too bad I didn’t check the batteries first.
Monsterlogs mating.
Too far beyond the trees, I live, cast into cement.
After these two, no juice left. So I walk around the park and then go and sit in the empty gazebo by the small pond next to my building. The sound and sparkle of the fountain flowing freely in the middle of the pond are mesmerizing. I think more about the book The Zen of Seeing, which I read back in the 70s and which awakened in me an affinity for the visual that I thought I was born without. It’s why I like to take photos, although the really good ones I take are almost always accidents and have to do with the law of averages. Today, no batteries to average it all out with.
The water streaming up from the fountain forms a fleur de lis, the mythic lily claimed to have sprung from the tears shed by Eve as she left Eden … the flower of Hera, the Greek moon goddess. In the Idylls of the King, The Lady Elaine is also known as the famed Lady of Shallot. Mythologically, Elaine was one of the Celtic Virgin Moon Goddess....The meaning of Elaine is "Lily Maid".
I’m so focused on the watery lily that I don’t notice the frolicsome family of ducks until they are right in front of me. It’s as though they suddenly appear in mid-feathery-duckling-splash. That’s how it happens sometimes – you are so focused on what’s in front of you that you don’t see all of the activity already going on along the edges of your vision.
I need to recharge my batteries.
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Emphasizing the questions.
In his No Utopia, Jim Culleny does his take on Paul Krugman's piece on "Matter of Emphasis."
A good place to start: look up "deceit" in the dictionary and you'll find the picture of a right-wing Republican apologist in front of a backdrop of logos of major TV news corporations. Then look up "seducible" and you'll find a group photo of 70% of the U.S. population. If we could only get it into our heads that once a government knows it can get away with creating lies to hype a "good" cause it's only a matter of time before it cranks up its lie-making machine to hype any cause.
Owning to the tenor of the times and the effects of two great mishaps (the 2000 election and 9/11), in practical terms, whatever "is" was before the truth became a sound bite-- will be a mystery wrapped in an enigma cloaked in a photo-op of the president getting tail-hooked onto an aircraft carrier wearing big goggles and a top-gun suit, then being greeted by a sea of cheering troops, and finally giving a speech about how the war is ...sort-of... over. It was a moment made for TV, literally.
And this quote on No Utopia deserves repeating:
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president,or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile,but it is morally treasonable to the American public."
-- Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
And so does this:THE CONSTITUTION ...have you ever read it?
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Are you sure you're not scared yet?
If you're not sure, this sure should make it so -- the following from an article by Joe Vecchio at the Democratic Underground: (Thanks to Steve James for the link.)
Free Inquiry magazine recently printed an article by political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt, who studied the fascist regimes of Germany, Italy, Spain, Indonesia and Chile. In this article he points out fourteen "identifying characteristics" of fascism. They are:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
6. Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
Vecchio's article includes lots of other very disturbing facts and some equally disturbing accurate observations, such as:
The "war" has since come and gone quickly, and the ones that perpetrated it are basking in the glow of victory, as a bunch of drunken, low-class thugs might celebrate kicking a homeless man to death. The river has long since caught fire, but instead of racing to put it out and trying to fix the problem so that it doesn't happen again, we seem to be enjoying it. In fact, we're sitting on the pier roasting weiners and singing songs. Do we worry that the fire is going to burn our own houses down sooner ot later? Nah, that'd never happen to us.
And meanwhile, just one more reason to be seriously concerned about just where Bush's head is at.
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Meet the Alaskan Crone.
Yes, that's Crone, not crane. Check out Klondike Kate's Aurora weblog, not only for magical photos of the Aurora Borealis, but for her wild but true stories of life on the edges of the ice. She's smart and smart-mouthed and has lived long and hard enough to have some wisdom-stimulating experiences.
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Another reason why I like Howard Dean.
This from his weblog via Betsy Devine:
...if you want to know what's on heavy rotation here in Burlington, it's undoubtedly the What I Want to Know (Dance Mix).
The Georgia Dean for America group (gaforhowarddean@yahoo.com) writes:
"You asked for it, so we created it…. The original Howard Dean Dance Mix. Lovingly called “What I want to Know”, this song mixes snippets of Dean’s speech to the California Democratic Party Dinner and a popular dance song to give our campaign both momentum and an ANTHEM. This can easily serve as a Democratic anthem against the growing usurping of power by the radical right wing Republicans and corporate affiliated conflict of interest ridden leaders in our nation’s capital."
For this week, GAForHowardDean dedicates this song to Senator Rick Sartorum for whom Howard Dean has asked his resignation. Bigotry can no longer be tolerated in this country. We want our country back……. Rock on Rick!
Click here to download.
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Are we all really, really, really worried yet?
I sure hope that we are, and that it means we’ll do something about it.
This is annoying and telling and has more impact than we'd like to believe, but it’s not as bad as Micheal Tomasky’s (American Prospect) analysis of the what the Democrats are facing::
....Republicans enjoy a bulbous advantage -- 30 points, even 40 in some surveys -- over Democrats on questions of foreign and domestic security. Sure, there are ways in which this isn't fair: the Department of Homeland Security was the Democrats' idea, the GOP's propagandists turn honorable dissent into treachery, all that. But however it got to be a fact, a fact it is. And it's not just a fact. It is the central fact of the presidential election at this early stage. The Democratic nominee will not stand a chance until he (I'm throwing out Carol Moseley Braun here; indulge me) puts some conviction and muscle behind a set of proposals that can convince Americans that the party is serious about fighting terrorism and protecting the national perimeter, and that the GOP doesn't own the issue….
So now the Republicans announce that they are going to meet in New York City about three miles from Ground Zero as near to the anniversary of the tragedy as possible. And they in essence acknowledge, discreetly but quite openly, that the purpose is to squeeze as much political gain out of the attacks, and the national-security issue, as they can.
This is a many-layered offense -- to the traditions and integrity (such that remains) of the American political process, to the firefighters and police officers who did not give their lives so that Bush could later use their deaths to get a bounce in the polls, to every American citizen who doesn't drink Karl Rove's Kool-Aid, and to plain decency.
and And AND, here’s what he suggests that the Democrats do (but he doesn’t believe that they will). I particularly like #3 because it has the potential to include the Internet's capacities to get input from citizens and direct answers from the candidate:
One: As many Democratic senators as possible -- and it has to be senators; House members don't get press coverage, so they don't really matter -- stand together at a press conference and denounce this rancid politicization of tragedy. Maybe Hillary Clinton can round up that guy from the international firefighters' union who has become such a supporter of hers, and she and Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) can persuade some survivors of 9-11 victims to join them. Fifteen senators and a half-dozen family members would amount to a critique of a different order than a press statement you have to seek out on the party's Web site.
Two: Announce that, because the Republicans have tossed 150 years of history and decorum out the window, Democrats are reconvening their own convention committee and exploring the possibility of rescheduling their convention for late August.
Three: Get really creative and declare that the era of the convention is over -- which is something we've all known to be true for about 20 years anyway -- and then announce that they're not even having a convention in the traditional sense. Maybe a mini, two-day gathering, so the nominee can make his speech with network coverage. But otherwise, take the money saved and spend it more wisely on other things, especially as they're running against a guy who destroyed another agreed-upon tradition (albeit only 30 years old this time) by refusing to abide by established spending limits and who will therefore have "more money than God," as the Republicans have lately become fond of saying. (Odd locution for such pious types, no?) [emphasis mine]
Four: Plan, or encourage others to plan, a serious, thoughtful, humble, dignified series of counter-events for the week the Republicans are in New York that show how real Americans -- Republicans who wish to participate included -- commemorate somber occasions.
I'm definitely really, really, really worried.
I'm not a registered Democrat. I'm not a registered Republican either (well, that's a given!) But I did make 200 copies of a flyer delineating Howard Dean's positions on education and delivered them yesterday (in the pouring, thunderous rain) to a woman with AlbanyforDean who is taking them to the education rally at the Capital today. It's not much, but as we get closer to Armageddon, I'm going to have to put more of my money where my mouth is. I see Dean as an intelligent and compassionate candidate, and he already has a weblog.
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Getting There.
Getting there is supposed to be half the fun. You’ve heard that saying, right?
Except getting there is different for everyone, and it's usually not a whole lot of fun.
Getting where? Getting to know one's true Self. Getting to some personal understanding. Getting to enlightenment (not that anyone ever really does). Getting to forgiveness. Getting to some sense of inner peace and acceptance. Getting to remember. It’s different for everyone. I need to remember that.
Yesterday, Jeneane posted about her response to her first session with a massage therapist, and what she describes is what I’ve heard happens when the mind and body really connect. I get a massage once a month, and it’s never happened to me like that. Sometimes I fall asleep; sometimes I space out and wind up having an AHA! about some problem I was trying to solve. Usually I try to let my consciousness rest in my spasmed back muscles so that I can become aware of what it feels like when they relax. I try to remember to breathe into the physical feelings. Sometimes I forget and she has to ask me “Are you breathing?” because my breathing becomes so shallow; I practically forget to breathe. I’ve always hoped to have an experience like the one Jeneane describes, but it's never happened for me.
Dancing used to work for me almost as well as massage, especially doing the Hustle or the Salsa non-stop for hours on end – lots of arm movement, very aerobic. I would get into my “zone” – my body would feel weightless and my movements would flow with my dance partner's as though we were one big dancing organism. (That’s organism, not orgasm. Got that?) But those kinds of dances require a dance partner, which I don’t have at the moment.
I have an old video of Gabrielle Roth called The Wave, which is sort of shamanic movement – solo dancing to rhythms that are supposed to help you to kind of space out, get to that stillpoint where the dancer is the dance. Maybe I need to dig that one out and try it again.
Meanwhile, getting a massage is feeling like better and better idea. I think I need to get myself over there soon.
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The dilemma of discontinuity.
This weblog is, for me, a combination of personal journal and political broadside. The political part poses no problem; its exists in the moment.
But the personal journal is a largely spontaneous and certainly continuous story. Each personal reflection exists in a larger context. But weblog surfers and readers don’t necessarily know that the larger context -- known only through those old related posts -- helps to make a larger sense of the newer entries. Someone reading my post about dancing with demons might not have ever read this fundamental piece or this or this or this or this or this from more than a year ago on my old weblog -- posts that tell more of the story of my therapy, my life, my struggles. Because, after all, that's what the personal journal part of this weblog is about.
Instead, they hold the tusk of the elephant and think “spear.”
It’s one of the conundrums of weblogging that I have to remember to keep in mind so that I do not make that same mistake as well.
But I do learn from my mistakes. And what I’ve learned this time is to be more careful with the construction of my paragraphs and my choice of words. If I start using “I” as the subject of my reflections, I shouldn’t change to the universal “you” because some people will assume that I’m referring specifically to them and I’m not. And I’ve learned to be careful to whom I link.
I’ve said before that I keep learning. I’ve learned that I’m “too soon old; too late smart.” I’ve learned that everything in life is a trade-off. And I’ve also learned to be careful what I take personally because in most cases it’s not that simple and it's not personal. If I share what I’ve learned in my weblog, it’s not to preach or persecute. If that’s how it comes across, I now have another thing I have to learn: to observe and reflect with more precision,.
I’ve apologized for not being clear about how I was defining “drugs” and for giving the wrong impression about the seriousness of getting medical treatment for severe depression. Now, I need to turn my attention to the writing that I’m being paid to do and let whatever rage I unleashed out there burn itself out without fanning any more flames.
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As further illumination on the demon thing.
This is a poem that sort of wrote itself after doing some intuitive work with my shamanic therapist -- years, years ago, during my more (ahem) sexually active era. It's based on one of my "vision quests" and was published in an anthology called Which Lilith: Feminist Writers Recreate the World's First Woman, so it can't be all that bad. I share it here to illustrate the benefits of dancing with my demons. Lilith is an archetype that loomed large in my therapeutic work, and if you're at all interested in why, you can read Frank Paynter's old interview with me.
Surrounded by Satyrs, Lilith Takes a Stand
Suddenly, they are all around me,
their jagged tracks
pointing in all directions,
etched into the earth like runes,
battered circles, omens of confusion.
They speak without words--
a slow lidding of eyes,
curving of mouth, writhing of tongue.
Their dappled shadows prance
to an overture of leaves
a crescendo of sun.
My body begins to dance in answer,
smell their musk
taste their salty steam,
sense thier strokes of fine hairs,
course skin, and
yes..yes..
Until the cloud, the cold--
a cold of mind,
an absence of heart.
I force myself to speak,
and the words break the spell,
their magic stronger
than even that basest call.
"And then what, my friends,
what then, when it is over,
and the night wind finds our skin,
urging us to a place safe for dreaming?
What then, when morning steals our union,
and you scamper away,
hungry for the day's diversions--
impromptu symphonies of senses?
And worse still,
what if you stay,
and I am caught in your silent
single-minded worship
of a world without words?
I have been here before, my frirends,
have reached into that dark fire
blazing so far from the hearth--
that ancient seething
that (even now)
I breathe from you,
feed from you
send to my nightly cauldron
to simmer and stir,
to ladle, at last,
into mounds of midnight words,
this witch's brew."
In the failing light,
the satyrs shift
and snort their disaffections;
their shadows sink into stones
to high for holding
I leave the stones to claim
their wordless dreams.
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This is not a competition.
Whoa! My post on Dancing with your demons got one of my Blog Sisters all worked up and it seems that I've given the wrong impression to about how I feel about using drugs to treat severe depression. My reference to "drugs" was to nnon-prescription ones that supposedly provide an "altered state of consciousness." I certainly was not criticizing anyone taking prescription anti-depressives. Hell, I'm one of them. If you're interested, you can read the wrong impressions posted here on the discussion on Blog Sisters, where I also comment, in my defense:
I was just suggesting an alternative to talk therapy, which seems not to be working for some webloggers whom I read. I never meant to discount the traditional ways to treat severe depression. I was simply sharing information for those who, like me, do see life as being all there is, so we sure ought to try to live it well and have some fun along the way.
Jealousof my new Blog Sisters' youth and popularity? If I were, why would I give them links to send even more readers their way? This is not a competition going on here. This is a sharing of experiences and information.
My post was meant to be an explanation of why I like the inner adventures that shamanic therapy leads me into -- the chance to step into my own personal mythos and get swept away into those deep caverns of my psyche that are not accessible any other way. For me, that's the place where personal power simmers, the hearthfire around which those sweet demons linger, waiting to be revealed, loved, and released. It's where poetry begins.
I'm sorry that I led so many of you to forget for a moment that, like you, I'm a complex individual, with varied interests and experiences -- some of them seemingly contradictory. As Walt Whitman once wrote (or something similar) "Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself." Don't we all?
For me (see, I'm not even trying to link to anyone else here) life IS a journey of self-discovery. It always has been, even during the times when I felt most at sea, most discouraged. Some people turn to their god at those times. Not believing in anything like that, I turn to those deep places inside myself that, I know, have the guts and wisdom to figure things out. And the help I get doing that is from a therapist who employs more intuitive methods than rational thought. It's not fanatical. It's a method of therapy that works best for some of us, and it often works well for the more creative and adventuresome, which is what I see most webloggers as, so it's why I tried to suggest it. Different strokes, right? This is not a competition.
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